Research

My current research is centered around the cultural and critical dimensions of data and its visualization. I’m at work on an interactive book on the history of data visualization, emphasizing how the modern visualizing impulse emerged from a set of complex intellectually- and politically-charged contexts in the United States and across the Atlantic. My other book project, which I’m writing with Catherine D’Ignazio (Emerson College), introduces the idea of data feminism: a way of thinking about data and its visualization that is informed by the past several decades of feminist activism and critical thought. A final component of my research involves the practice of visualization. I’m interested in designing data visualizations that present concepts, advance arguments, and perform critique.

I’m also finalizing my first book, Matters of Taste: Eating, Aesthetics, and the Early American Archive (University of Minnesota Press), which explores how eating can offer a new way of thinking about aesthetics in early America—and, therefore, about the philosophical work of food and its significance for the people who prepare, serve, and consume it.

In addition, I serve as associate series editor (with Matthew K. Gold) for Debates in the Digital Humanities, a hybrid print/digital publication stream from the University of Minnesota Press that explores debates in the field as they emerge. The next annual volume is slated for a Spring 2019 release.